Snapshot

by Craig Robertson

  ‘So where is she then? We know she’s not with her mother and we know she’s not in your flat.’

  ‘She’s with my mother, okay? Fuck all to do with you but she’s with my maw. Leave her out of this. Nothing to do with that skank and fuck all to do with you.’

  A vein was pumping furiously on Breslin’s forehead and his anger was ready to boil over. There were one or two more buttons to be pressed though and Narey had her finger poised.

  ‘See, that’s interesting. That poor girl. An addict for a mother and a violent dealer for a father. I am sure Social Services would be very interested to hear that. What would you say are the chances of them being allowed to keep that child, DC Corrieri?’

  ‘Roughly zero,’ Corrieri answered impassively.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Beslin roared.

  ‘We have a duty to report it,’ Narey continued. ‘Then it’s out of our hands.’

  ‘You fucking bitch! What do you want?’

  ‘I want to know when you last saw Una. And I want to know where you were on Saturday night.’

  Breslin screwed his eyes tightly shut and let rip a silent scream of frustration.

  ‘I told you. Saw her last Saturday. She was going out to work.’

  ‘To work?’ Narey mocked. ‘Okay. So what did you do when she went to work? Did you follow her, make sure she wasn’t pocketing some of the cash that you wanted for yourself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you didn’t wonder where she was all that time?’

  Breslin shrugged.

  ‘Did you wonder?’ Narey repeated.

  ‘She wandered off sometimes,’ he replied. ‘Got off her face in some shithole with some dirty crackhead or other but she always came crawling back for the T-Bone.’

  Narey shook her head at him.

  ‘But she didn’t come crawling back this time, did she?’

  With that, she lifted a photograph off the table and turned it over, shoving it in Breslin’s face.

  It showed Melanie lying half-naked on the ground with the life choked out of her.

  Breslin flinched. Narey couldn’t quite be sure if it was shock at the realization that the girl was dead or at seeing what he’d done. Maybe it was both, the possibility that he had left her there thinking she was alive and would come ‘crawling back’ in her own good time. Either way, shock was all over Breslin’s face until he reined it back into its customary snarl.

  ‘Where were you last Saturday night around midnight?’ Narey asked him.

  ‘That’s nothing to do with me,’ he answered, pointing to the photo.

  ‘Where were you? Last Saturday at midnight?’

  ‘I didn’t do that. No way you can pin that on me. That slag worked the streets. Any fucker could have done that to her.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Breslin. Your anguish is so touching. Once again, where were you on Saturday night?’

  ‘I was with someone. She can prove that.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A friend,’ he sneered with a grin that Narey itched to smash off his face.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Suzanne Wright. I was with her all night.’

  ‘All night?’

  He grinned again.

  ‘All night. They don’t call me T-Bone for nothing. You should try some, bitch.’

  ‘No thanks. I’d rather stay disease-free if it’s all the same to you. Give us an address for this young “lady”. And you are going nowhere till we check it out.’

  ‘Oh it’ll check out okay. Suzy’s not going to forget a night with the T-Bone. I’ll be out of here by lunchtime.’

  The fear ran through Narey that he would be. If the girl that he had lined up as an alibi said she was with him then he’d be walking free unless they could prove she was lying.

  ‘Take this piece of shit out of my sight and put him in a cell,’ she muttered to the uniforms waiting at the door. ‘We’ll be seeing him again soon enough. Oh, and Tommy?’

  ‘Yeah?’ he grinned.

  ‘I’m just off to make that call to Social Services. Your “maw” isn’t going to be looking after your kid for much longer.’

  ‘You fucking bitch,’ he screamed, getting to his feet and viciously kicking over the table. ‘I told you what you wanted to know! You can’t do that!’

  ‘Watch me. Get him the fuck out of here.’

  CHAPTER 26

  Suzanne Wright, the girl that Tommy Breslin was using as an alibi, also lived in Summerston, just a few streets away from the man that called himself T-Bone. Narey had made sure that Breslin’s one phone call wasn’t to her and was now standing impatiently on Wright’s doorstep in a block of flats in Torrin Road near John Paul Academy. She’d left Julia Corrieri behind in Stewart Street to search the PNC for Una and so had Constable Sandy Murray in tow.

  On the third knock, Wright finally wrestled herself away from daytime TV and pulled the door open just enough on the chain to see who her unwelcome visitor was. One look was all she needed to make Narey for a cop and the chain stayed in place.

  ‘Whit?’

  ‘Suzanne Wright?’ Narey asked of the pale face below the tousled mop of dyed blonde hair.

  ‘Naw.’

  ‘Funny, it’s your name on the door.’

  ‘Aye, okay. What do you want?’

  Narey held up her warrant card.

  ‘Police. Can we come in?’

  The girl exhaled heavily and slid back the chain, huffily edging the door open for the DS and the constable to enter the flat. A television blared in one corner of the poky living room showing one of the mid-morning confrontation programmes that Narey hated but occasionally watched in guilty secret. Narey picked up the remote control and lowered the volume before placing it back next to Wright.

  She was in her mid-twenties and wore a short denim skirt over bare legs and a halterneck top that showed off her cleavage. Dumping herself in an armchair without bothering to offer a seat to the police, she seemed utterly unfazed by their presence and Narey guessed it wasn’t the first time that cops had knocked at her door. The girl picked up the cigarette that had been smouldering in an ashtray on the chair’s arm and began drawing on it.

  ‘You live here alone, Suzanne?’ Narey asked, looking around the room.

  ‘Yeah. Just me,’ she replied with as much defiance as suspicion.

  ‘You ever have friends staying over?’

  ‘What is this? You’re a detective sergeant, right? You’re not here about whether I’m entitled to my single person’s discount on the council tax.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Narey conceded. ‘Do you know Thomas Breslin?’

  A frown flickered over Wright’s face but she quickly covered it with a heavy drag on her cigarette. By the time she exhaled, there was nothing to read on her face.

  ‘Yeah, I know him. Why?’

  ‘Stay the night sometimes, does he?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ Wright challenged her. ‘Not getting enough of your own that you have to stick your nose into other people’s sex lives?’

  ‘Does he stay over sometimes?’ Narey repeated.

  ‘Yeah. Sometimes.’

  ‘When did he last spend the night here?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He’s stayed over a couple of times recently.’

  ‘Try to remember.’

  ‘The weekend.’

  ‘Which part of the weekend, Suzanne?’

  ‘Friday and Saturday. He was here both nights.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You weren’t sure a moment ago.’

  Wright grinned at her.

  ‘Well, it all just came back to me. They don’t call him T-Bone for nothing.’

  It was Narey’s turn to smile.

  ‘Funny, Suzanne. That’s exactly what he said.’

  The grin slipped off Wright’s face.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean but he was here all night Friday and all night Saturday. Shagging my brains out.’
/>   ‘You do know that he has got a girlfriend, don’t you?’

  ‘What, that skank Melanie? She’s not his girlfriend. She’s a meal ticket, nothing more.’

  ‘Hm. A meal ticket and a punch-bag from what I hear.’

  Wright continued to puff furiously on her cigarette.

  ‘He ever hit you, Suzanne?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Never? A man with a temper like T-Bone’s? Not even a little slap when you were arguing?’ The girl’s silence spoke volumes.

  ‘He is a very violent man, Suzanne. Do you know why I’m asking you about last Saturday night? His girlfriend Melanie, the “skank”? She was murdered.’

  Wright’s eyes widened but she still said nothing.

  ‘Strangled,’ Narey continued. ‘Someone killed her with their bare hands.’

  The girl simply shrugged but the DS could see the fear in her eyes.

  ‘Are you still saying that Tommy Breslin was with you all night?’

  ‘Aye, I am. All night.’

  ‘Okay. Just be careful, Suzanne. Breslin is vicious and this is a murder investigation. I’m going to leave you my card and if you have anything else to tell me then you can give me a call. I’ll just leave it here on the telly.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time. You know the way out.’

  She picked up the remote control and pointed it at the television screen, the volume booming out even louder than before. Narey took her leave and the constable trotted along quietly in her wake.

  The similarity of Wright’s statement to Breslin’s was just too pat for Narey’s liking but there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about that for now. She was convinced that Suzanne had been schooled to say that Breslin was working his magic on her all night but she couldn’t prove it. On the other hand, if Breslin had killed Una then she was damn sure that she would prove that.

  At least the small amount of drugs that had been found in Breslin’s flat was enough to keep him in custody for a while and it would probably also be enough for Social Services to take the girl into care. That gave her leverage against Breslin which she wouldn’t hesitate to use.

  As Narey settled back into the driver’s seat of the car, watching Sandy Murray climb into the passenger seat, her mobile rang. It was Corrieri.

  ‘Yes, Julia? What’s happening?’

  ‘Well . . .’ the excitement in Corrieri’s voice was obvious and immediately quickened Narey’s pulse. ‘As you know, I’ve been searching the PNC, missing person’s lists and the General Register Office for Scotland for any Una that might be our girl.’

  Narey knew by now that Corrieri was likely to give her chapter and verse on any and every step in the process and she was sorely tempted to tell her just to get to the fucking point. Still, the DC had been working since the day before and probably deserved her drawn-out explanation, so Narey let her continue.

  ‘There was nothing at all on the PNC that seemed a likely candidate nor on the Missing People website. I got a list of every Una born in Scotland within the parameters of our assumption of her age, i.e. between 1986 and 1990, and I drew up a subsection of these within the greater Glasgow area. None, however, had a surname close to McCulloch which was the surname that “Melanie” used.’ Narey groaned inwardly. This was the nonsense with the weird offender fetishes all over again.

  ‘But . . .’ Corrieri paused. ‘I thought I might try variations on the spelling of Una and did some research on the derivation of the name. It is believed to be Irish in origin, meaning either ‘one’ or ‘lamb’. The anglicized versions of the name therefore include Unity and Agnes . . .’

  ‘Julia . . .’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant. Sorry. The Irish variations include Oona and Oonagh. So I started the process again from the beginning with both spellings. And . . . well, I got something.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘An Oonagh McCullough. Born in 1988, making her twenty-three. She went missing from her home in Giffnock seven years ago and her parents haven’t seen her since.’

  Narey fell silent.

  ‘Do you think it might be her, Sarge?’

  ‘Every chance of it, Julia. Very good work but we’ll need to get hold of dental records to see if we can get a match and then contact this girl’s parents. Can you order up the records for me, please?’

  There was a slight pause.

  ‘I’ve eh, already taken the liberty of requesting them and I’ve got a telephone number for Mr and Mrs McCullough. I hope that’s okay.’

  Narey laughed inside. Her awkward, unco-ordinated DC was blooming into a swan.

  ‘That’s definitely okay, Julia. Remind me to buy you a drink tonight.’

  CHAPTER 27

  Winter’s head was all over the place as he left Rory McCabe’s flat and he must have driven a mile without noticing a thing, his mind buzzing. Names, times and dates were crashing into each other and he couldn’t make much sense of them. If that wasn’t bad enough then he hurt like fuck. He could taste blood and knew he must have looked a sight.

  He drove straight back to his flat, dashing inside before anyone could see him and heading for the shower. The water stung but it felt good. He spat onto the floor of the shower, seeing a whisper of coquelicot spiral down the drain.

  As he dried off in front of the bathroom mirror, grimacing at the rub of the towel, he noticed a fierce red mark under his right eye and wondered if his cheekbone was broken but reckoned if it was then he’d have really known. His lip had pretty much healed already and apart from a lump on the side of his head the rest of the damage would be easily covered up.

  He looked like a patchwork quilt of red, blacks and purples across his ribs though. Staying at Rachel’s place that night or even the next few was out of the question; the bruises would beg questions that he didn’t want to answer. A couple of nights in his own bed and he could probably pass them off as a rough game of five-a-side as long as she wasn’t looking too closely.

  Fuck it, it would be fine. Anyway, he was now armed with information that he wasn’t sure what to do with. Sammy Ross. He dug out his photographs from Blochairn, the ones that he’d barely been arsed to take. Sammy boy staring into the abyss, a smiley slash biting his chest.

  There was a close-up of his face and his pleading eyes. What the fuck was it all about, Sammy? What did you have to do with any of this? You were nothing more than the shit on the shoes of someone like Caldwell or Quinn, way down the ladder from the rest of them. Stabbed not shot, you just didn’t fit, yet it was your name that fell from Rory McCabe’s lips. Okay, maybe the wee shite had made it up but Winter doubted it. How, apart maybe from having read it in the papers, could he even have come up with his name unless he was telling the truth?

  Another thought kept jabbing at Winter’s mind though. Not just what did any of it have to do with Sammy but what did it have to do with him? His job was to take photographs. Keep telling yourself that, he thought, keep telling yourself that.

  He moved the prints of the dead dealer from one folder to another. He’d had to die to achieve it but Sammy had finally moved up a league. He’d been promoted from mundane murder to headline news even if the only person who knew it was Winter. He was in six-foot deep with Caldwell and Quinn, Strathie and Sturrock, Adamson and Haddow. His mammy would be proud at long last.

  Winter’s phone broke the insufferable silence with a text from Addison.

  Pub @ 8. Think of somewhere or else it’s the TSB.

  It would be the Station Bar because Winter couldn’t be arsed deciding on another pub. He texted back to say okay, then phoned Rachel, bracing himself for the likelihood that her detective radar was switched on and she’d see through his flimsy half-lie. As it turned out, he didn’t have much need to worry. Either she bought his story about not feeling great or more likely she was up to her ears in her own case and it suited her just fine to be alone that night. That was already three nights in a row, and he missed her. The speed with which she agreed and hung up suggested she didn’t miss h
im quite as much.

  It was okay. He knew there was another man in her life right now and that it wasn’t one he should be jealous of. It came with the job and anyway, Winter now had another nine men in his. All dead.

  He had a couple of hours before heading to Cowcaddens to meet Addison in the TSB so he decided to go online and see what he could learn about Kieran McKendrick. If there wasn’t enough there then he’d head to the Mitchell Library and go through the back copies of the papers. There were plenty of people on the force he could ask but that was a no-no for now. He wanted to keep this to himself and there wasn’t a reason for that he could come up with that didn’t scare him. No reason that wasn’t wrong, one way or another.

  He booted up his laptop and googled the name, coming up with a selection of photographers, chip shops, pub landlords, football players and genealogy searches. He added ‘drugs death’ and hit enter. There were just three results. He picked the one from the Daily Record, all seven paragraphs of it. More than your average stabbing got.

  ‘Teen drugs death blamed on miaow-miaow’, ran the headline

  The victim of a suspected drugs death in Glasgow has been named as Kieran McKendrick.

  The 17-year-old was found dead in the entrance to a tenement block in the Dennistoun area yesterday. It is believed he was abandoned there by friends after having a reaction to the drug mephedrone.

  Police say the teenager had taken mephedrone in the hours preceding his death. A full toxicology report has been called for and Strathclyde Police say they are trying to work out what role, if any, mephedrone – street name miaow-miaow – played in his death.

  Kieran’s mother Rosaleen said her son was, ‘a lovely boy who never did anyone any harm.’

  Detective Chief Inspector Anthony Morrison, who is leading the inquiry, said family and friends have told him that Kieran had been taking the drug on the day of his death, possibly with other substances.

  DCI Morrison is asking for anyone with knowledge of Kieran’s movements on the day of his death to come forward. He is particularly keen to speak to the friends he may have been with that day.

  The teen’s family, his mother, brother and younger sister, are said to be devastated by his death.